Regional transit money should not be lavished on rail services such as Caltrain and BART at the expense of bus service used mainly by poor minorities, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors asserted Tuesday.

The long-simmering debate over equal funding for bus and rail service erupted among supervisors as they debated a resolution aimed at pressuring the Metropolitan Transportation Commission to provide more money to AC Transit, which runs buses in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

The resolution, proposed by board president Keith Carson, passed 3-1, with one member absent. Carsons district comprises Berkeley, Emeryville and much of Oakland.

The measure coincides with a spate of unpopular cutbacks in AC Transit lines, which all four supervisors noted Tuesday.

The high cost of living in this community continues to go up and make it extremely challenging for individuals who cannot afford the high cost of auto insurance, cannot afford the high cost of gas, cannot afford the high cost of purchasing even a used automobile, Carson said in arguing for equal funding for AC Transit.

He also zinged the MTC for lobbying Congress to change funding rules for the federal Jobs Access and Reverse Commute program, which was designed to help low-income commuters get to work. The subsequent change to the program resulted in a loss for AC Transit, Carson said.

The commissions deputy director for policy, Therese McMillan, defended the agency, which determines transportation priorities for the nine-county Bay Area.

She noted MTC subsidizes AC Transits operating expenses more than it does for BART or Caltrain.

Its operating deficits that result in service cuts, McMillan said, adding the MTC does not control many types of funding for all three agencies, such as the property tax that funds AC Transit and sales taxes to help support BART and Caltrain.

As for what MTC does control, MTC

directed subsidies of $6 million to BART,

$4 million to Caltrain and over $500 million to AC Transit for the six-year period ending in 2003, McMillan said.

Supervisor Scott Haggerty, who was selected by his fellow supervisors to represent the county on the MTC, voted against the measure after delivering a scathing critique against people pushing the measure.

Several of the people who spoke in favor of the resolution Tuesday were involved in a class-action lawsuit filed in April 2005 against MTC charging its allocation of transportation funds discriminates against poor, minority transit riders.

The effort is being spearheaded by San Francisco-based PublicAdvocates, Oakland-based Communities for a Better Environment and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 192, which represents AC Transit bus drivers, mechanics and other workers.

This lawsuit is ill-informed and entirely without foundation, said Haggerty, whose district has a higher proportion of higher-income white residents.

BART spokesman Linton Johnson acknowledged before Tuesdays hearing that capital costs for rail transit are more expensive than bus transit.

If you want to look at operational costs, BART has one of the highest fare-box recovery records in the nation, certainly in the state of California. Its almost triple that of AC Transit, Johnson said.

Haggerty, who said he advocates free bus and rail transit, noted that the one agency conspicuously absent from the debate over transit equity is AC Transit itself. He asserted the agencys own general manager disagreed with the plaintiffs in the suit.

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